ESD Offering New Two-Hour Continuing Education Classes

SOUTHFIELD – Michigan engineers who want to enhance their personal and professional growth – or who need continuing education credits newly required to keep a Michigan Professional Engineer (PE) license – will want to check out new two-hour educational classes being offered by The Engineering Society of Detroit.

The courses cover a broad range of topics and are geared toward engineers and other technical professionals.

The courses are $50 per course for ESD members and $75 for non-members. There’s also a student rate of $25. Each course earns two hours of continuing education credit. A certificate of completion will be provided.

To register, visit this link, or call (248) 353-0735 to register by phone. For more information, contact Elana Shelef at eshelef@esd.org or (248) 353-0735, ext. 119.

The course schedule is as follows:

Monday, April 24: Water MattersPresented by Thomas M. Doran, PE, FESD, Retired Principal and Vice President, Hubbell, Roth & Clark, Inc.
A class to identify what should concern us and what should encourage us, along with common misconceptions concerning water and insights into how we arrived at where we are today with our water resources, presented by someone who has worked on water projects in the United States, Latin America, and Canada for 40 years. Drinking water, wastewater, groundwater, and stormwater will be addressed, including some surprise information that isn’t often heard.

Wednesday, May 3: Fundamentals of Mass Reduction / Light Weighting TechniquesPresented by Dinesh C. Seksaria, PE, Principal/Consultant, Dinesh C. Seksaria PE PLLC
This presentation will provide an overview of the underlying and enabling science involved in the currently popular subject of “light weighting”. It is intended to help individuals (non-FEA/non-structural) in both engineering as well as some non-engineering functions to understand “what light weighting means, what is involved in doing it and how it is generally accomplished.” It is intended to help both new and experienced individuals with some technical background to get a better appreciation of this subject. Pertinent terminology will be defined and basic engineering concepts that influence weight and various methods for its reduction will be discussed. Other topics that will be covered include notions of loads, stresses and deflections along with concepts of strength and stiffness as they relate to material properties in relationship to weight. Also reviewed will be other critical material characteristics that must be considered in making the technical and economic choices involved in light weighting of mechanical structural elements of a product’s design.

Monday, May 8: The Zilwaukee Bridge: From the Beginning to the Present Presented by Matthew J. Chynoweth, PE, Deputy Metro Region Engineer, Michigan Department of Transportation
This presentation will highlight the initial studies into the decision on construction of a high-level bridge for I-75 over the Saginaw River, including the various options, and challenges at the time. Once the decision was made on the construction of the post-tensioned concrete segmental option, there were many challenges associated with it, considering it was Michigan’s first construction experience of its type. The initial challenges in the design and construction will be chronicled, along with the construction failure in August of 1982, and the subsequent repairs to save the bridge. Some 30 years of operations will also be explored, including the major challenges of replacing the bearings as part of the 2013-2014 project.

Monday, May 15: System Modeling: Rigor for Medical, Construction and Other Engineering ActivitiesPresented by Michael J. Vinarcik, PE, FESD
Model Based Systems Engineering has been growing in popularity in aerospace, defense, automotive, and other industries. However, it has not been as widely adopted in medical, construction, and smaller-scale engineering activities. The increased rigor, speed, and consistency that MBSE brings to interface management, functional analysis, Failure Mode Effects Analysis, and safety analysis allow engineers to detect defects sooner and improve the odds of program success. Learn how this transformative methodology can be applied to your projects.

Wednesday, May 24: Autonomous Vehicles – Roadway to the FuturePresented by Robert L. Neff, Marketing Director, Sales and Marketing Insight
What will our life be like with autonomous vehicles? Will it be the anticipated utopia or will there are new concerns that have to be considered? How will people regard this disrupting technology as it evolves? What does the future look like with autonomous vehicles? This presentation will include a brief history of automated vehicles and highways going back to 1925. The speaker was the technical leader for his company’s participation in the 1997 National Automated Highway Demonstration where autonomous vehicles were successfully demonstrated to be technologically feasible on a prototype-automated highway in San Diego.

Date To Be Determined: Cyber Security in Automotive Applications Presented by Dr. Donald D. Price, PE, Technical Lead, EWCAP Group at United States Council for Automotive Research, LLC (USCAR)
Dr. Price will give an overview of cyber threats in automotive applications and discuss how automakers and their suppliers work collaboratively to assess whether a vehicle is robust against cyber security threats.

Date To Be Determined: Bringing Conservation to CitiesPresented by Dr. John H. Hartig, Refuge Manager, Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge
The story of how innovative public-private partnerships are making nature part of everyday urban life in the automobile capitals of the U.S. and Canada in an effort to inspire and develop the next generation of conservationists in urban areas because that is where 80 percent of U.S. and Canadian citizens live.